This study of some sixty-odd Italian-language music-theater pieces for Holy Week in seventeenth-century Vienna addresses the issues of Habsburg dynastic piety, memory and commemoration, Passion ...
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This study of some sixty-odd Italian-language music-theater pieces for Holy Week in seventeenth-century Vienna addresses the issues of Habsburg dynastic piety, memory and commemoration, Passion devotion, and political meaning in the works. It further considers some surprising conjunctions of poetic conceptualism in connection with surprising—and theatrical—musical techniques. The pieces were meant to be performed in front of a constructed replica of Christ’s tomb—hence their Italian sobriquet, sepolcri—and often with an additional stage-set. Flourishing during the reign of Emperor Leopold I (1657–1705), the genre was also indebted to the patronage and piety of the women around him, including his stepmother, the Dowager Empress Eleonora, his three wives, and several of his daughters. The libretti, many by the famed Nicolo Minato, show unusual textual strategies in the recollection of Christ’s Passion, as they are imagined to take place after his burial. But they also involve wider realms of the dynastic’s self-image, material possessions, and political ideology. Although both the texts and the music—the latter by a variety of composers, most notably Giovanni Felice Sances and Antonio Draghi, along with Leopold himself—are little studied today, they also combined in performance to provide a sonic enactment of mourning according to the most recent norms of Italian musical dramaturgy.Less

Fruits of the Cross : Passiontide Music Theater in Habsburg Vienna

Robert L. Kendrick

Published in print: 2018-11-13

This study of some sixty-odd Italian-language music-theater pieces for Holy Week in seventeenth-century Vienna addresses the issues of Habsburg dynastic piety, memory and commemoration, Passion devotion, and political meaning in the works. It further considers some surprising conjunctions of poetic conceptualism in connection with surprising—and theatrical—musical techniques. The pieces were meant to be performed in front of a constructed replica of Christ’s tomb—hence their Italian sobriquet, sepolcri—and often with an additional stage-set. Flourishing during the reign of Emperor Leopold I (1657–1705), the genre was also indebted to the patronage and piety of the women around him, including his stepmother, the Dowager Empress Eleonora, his three wives, and several of his daughters. The libretti, many by the famed Nicolo Minato, show unusual textual strategies in the recollection of Christ’s Passion, as they are imagined to take place after his burial. But they also involve wider realms of the dynastic’s self-image, material possessions, and political ideology. Although both the texts and the music—the latter by a variety of composers, most notably Giovanni Felice Sances and Antonio Draghi, along with Leopold himself—are little studied today, they also combined in performance to provide a sonic enactment of mourning according to the most recent norms of Italian musical dramaturgy.

Opera, race, and politics during apartheid South Africa form the foundation of this historiographic work on the Eoan Group, a so-called colored cultural organization that performed opera in the Cape. ...
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Opera, race, and politics during apartheid South Africa form the foundation of this historiographic work on the Eoan Group, a so-called colored cultural organization that performed opera in the Cape. The La Traviata Affair: Opera in the Time of Apartheid charts Eoan’s opera activities from its inception in 1933 until the cessation of its work by 1980. By accepting funding from the apartheid government and adhering to apartheid conditions, the group, in time, became politically compromised, resulting in the rejection of the group by their own community and the cessation of opera production. However, their unquestioned acceptance of and commitment to the art of opera lead to the most extraordinary of performance trajectories. During apartheid, the Eoan Group provided a space for colored people to perform Western classical art forms in an environment that potentially transgressed racial boundaries and challenged perceptions of racial exclusivity in the genre of opera. This highly significant endeavor and the way it was thwarted at the hands of the apartheid regime is the story that unfolds in this book.Less

La Traviata Affair : Opera in the Age of Apartheid

Hilde Roos

Published in print: 2018-10-23

Opera, race, and politics during apartheid South Africa form the foundation of this historiographic work on the Eoan Group, a so-called colored cultural organization that performed opera in the Cape. The La Traviata Affair: Opera in the Time of Apartheid charts Eoan’s opera activities from its inception in 1933 until the cessation of its work by 1980. By accepting funding from the apartheid government and adhering to apartheid conditions, the group, in time, became politically compromised, resulting in the rejection of the group by their own community and the cessation of opera production. However, their unquestioned acceptance of and commitment to the art of opera lead to the most extraordinary of performance trajectories. During apartheid, the Eoan Group provided a space for colored people to perform Western classical art forms in an environment that potentially transgressed racial boundaries and challenged perceptions of racial exclusivity in the genre of opera. This highly significant endeavor and the way it was thwarted at the hands of the apartheid regime is the story that unfolds in this book.

PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2019. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use.date: 15 September 2019